Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said today that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein was a “pretty good deal.”

Bush was speaking at an event sponsored by Americans for Peace, Prosperity and Security (APPS), a group formed and backed by a number of people associated with major defense contractors.

Video of Bush’s remark was posted online by an attendee of the event:

According to journalist Alan He, Bush also criticized efforts to reform the National Security Agency’s dragnet metadata surveillance program, telling the audience that it was a “mistake to repeal the metadata provisions of the Patriot Act.”

As The Intercept previously reported, the APPS is advised by Raytheon’s Stephen Hadley, BAE Systems’ Rich Ashooh, former SAIC chief executive Walt Havenstein, among other defense contractors and defense industry lobbyists. APPS was formed earlier this year as a pressure group to “help elect a president who supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy.”

APPS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, does not disclose its donor information. The chairman of the group, former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., a hawkish politician who has called for greater U.S. military involvement in a number of conflicts around the world, now works for a number of private interests, though he has refused to disclose them.

Costs associated with the war in Iraq, including medical treatment for war veterans, could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next decade, according to a study by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. The war killed at least 134,000 Iraqi civillians, as well as nearly 8,000 U.S. forces and contractors, according to the study.

The period following 9/11, including the war in Iraq, has been a boon for the defense contracting industry. From 2001 through 2010, the stock prices of major defense firms surged 67 percent as the U.S. increased defense spending to manage the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well new homeland security spending.

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I hope we’re all aware that Jeb was one of the founders of the PNAC – “Project for a New American Centrury”, which openly called for a “new Pearl Habor” a year (almost to the day) before 9/11/01.
I don’t know if the truth behind 9/11 is taboo here at TI but it’s worth noting. Jeb’s got his hands all over 9/11 – the evidence is clear to see for anyone who wants to look.
9/11 resulted in the greatest boon for defense contractors in recent history, if ever. And here he is. Apparently whatever got us into Iraq was a good deal.

quote”From 2001 through 2010, the stock prices of major defense firms surged 67 percent as the U.S. increased defense spending to manage the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well new homeland security spending.”unquote

THANK GOD this guy has NO SHOT at being elected. But still….. Our choices for Commander and Chief show that our country makes the world a more dangerous place. We enable way too many bad things and are completely reversing on freedom of speech and human rights.

The US govt. is in the business of making war, ever since WW 2, the US economy is based on war. I don’t know if the govt. knows how to function otherwise, at least I haven’t seen it yet in my lifetime. The politicians don’t lose friends and children in their wars and have to pay for them. This is one of the main reasons we “need security” in the world ’cause we’re so hostile abroad. The number of lives lost is hard to even count except for US lives, its time to take OUR country back only I don’t know how to do it. Peace…

To old Hippie from old Soldier, what you say is true. We learned a lesson from the Viet Nam War on “trumped’ up “undeclared” wars, unfortunately only temporary and totally lost since 9/11. How to move war from the top to the bottom of the toolbox of State; restore the Constitution and Republic, separation of powers and oversight and diligent press and electorate which makes war difficult to declare. Peace, I hope so but those that have usurped power will not yield it without the force of law and threat of action by we the people.

We keep missing the target. The closer they get to Baku, the better they feel about themselves GLOBALLY, fuck US. What’s not to love about a game of RISK? The Bushes and Clintons never lost a son, daughter or their minds asking WTF, they just got paid.

Let’s roll before Hillbilly and Jebigeorge bankrupt us, too. Vote for Bernie and then we’ll figure out WTF to do, anything’s better than this duplicitous corporate slavery, even political suicide.

I wonder if the Bush siblings even got sophisticated enough for “Risk,” or would have been able to find Baku on a map? (George W., a month before the invasion, once said at a briefing about Shiites and Sunnis, “But I thought all Iraqis were Muslims”). And Jeb! probably thinks Crimea is a blues song.

Someone should make Jeb! read Caulaincourt’s “With Napoleon In Russia,” so he can see how much fun a winter campaign there will be.

No, you are the one with the reading comprehension problem. JB’s statement leaves open the possibility that other aspects of the invasion were not such a good deal. LF’s statement implies that the whole invasion was a good deal. Two different things. Even the junior and dumbest brother of the family most resembling US royalty deserves to have his statements interpreted correctly. He says plenty of idiotic things; no need to distort them.

Lee wrote: “Jeb Bush said today that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein was a “pretty good deal.”

Bush actually said: ‘I’ll tell you though that taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal’.

In both of the above the main point is the removal of Saddam Hussein was a good thing: whether I change the verbs ‘take out’ or ‘toppling’ Saddam Hussein, they are synonyms saying the same thing. There is no significant misrepresentation in Lee’s paraphrasing of Bush deliberate or otherwise. You’re making something out of nothing.

No. What Lee paraphrased and what Bush actually said are essentially the same point being made. If I say “the Allied led invasion to topple Hitler was a pretty good deal” , or if I say “I’ll tell you though that taking out Hitler turned out to be a pretty good deal”, they’re just different ways of saying basically the same thing. While Lee did not quote him verbatim, he certainly did not distort his main message in any significant way that misrepresents what he actually said. We agree to disagree.

Bush III is ready and willing to torture the American public with another 8 years of a Bush in the Oval Office. He is sincere in selling the War on Iraq as “a really swell deal.” Costing 8,000 American lives, 4,000 permanent injuries and $4 trillion in taxpayer money is a good deal to these neo-cons and war-mongers.

Invading countries and waging wars of aggression seem to run in the Bush family. George H. W. Bush invaded Panama and of course Iraq. Son George W. Bush invaded both Iraq and Afghanistan. Jeb Bush has surrounded himself with many of the same foreign policy geniuses that advised his brother. Therefore one can conclude that a Jeb Bush foreign policy would involve invading at least one country or perhaps two.

Yeah “pretty good deal” for all the American war profiteers and their shareholders, not so good for the 100s of thousands of maimed, murdered and displaced human beings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also not too good for all those Americans who ended up dead and maimed “spreading the freedom and liberty” and “defending against the super scary superhuman swarthy Mussulman and his Islamofascist ways spreading his diabolically high tech non-existent WMDs” all over the place like Terrorism Skittles. Which is ironic given the West has got the most and bestest WMDs of anybody on the planet and they sure as shit aren’t shy about spreading them wherever they please whenever they want for whatever pathetically lame reason they believe to be in their “interests”. If I was any non-American anywhere in the world except Europe, and I heard an American government official say “America has interests in the region”, I’d start stocking up on guns, ammo, provision and digging a bomb shelter and tunnels–cause that’s no bueno and means the Americans will be kicking in your doors or drone bombing you in the next decade or so.

I’m not sure whether a backward- or forward-looking ceremony is more appropriate for the Bush coronation. Do we simply call him Your Exalted Highness, Majesty of All and give him a crown and put his crest on the flag and such? Or does he issue shares of common stock in the American Monarchy Corporation, a reserved fraction to various family members and then the rest to contributors in proportion to their investment?

Definitely a Bush victory signals a time for introspection and reflection, study of scientific socialism and Confucian meritocracy, and serious soul-searching about what the People’s Liberation Army can do to restore a measure of freedom to America.

I think the model is the hereditary monarchy in North Korea. Jeb! is the Young Leader; W. was the Great Leader, or maybe the Dumb Leader. Paterfamilias was … well, the guy who hired Dan Quayle as their tutor.

Yeah but if we have to call him Your Good Dealership does that mean there will be a “chicken in every pot and a good deal on a new car in every garage” like that hoary Republican statesman Herbert Hoover promised in 1928? Cuz that might be kind of an improvement for the Bush legacy.

The article should have included Jeb’s earlier responses to the “was Iraq a mistake” question that were reported widely… because he tried four times to answer it, and he is now contradicting his last answer.

The man is either supremely clueless or frightfully dishonest, with a Romney level of ignorance about saying things as if nobody outside the room will ever hear them.

The fact that so many Big Money donors are betting on Jeb as the best out of the 16 Repubs who think they deserve to be president (as evidenced by his fundraising haul), makes it clear none of them are remotely qualified for the job… and that the donors are clueless as well.

After pulling a Mitt like this, I look forward to Jeb’s attempts at “clarifying” or walking back this most recent claim about Iraq. It’s bound to be a doozy of a word pretzel.

Well I don’t know if any of Jeb!’s word pretzels could hold a candle to baby brother’s word salads chock full of meaningless malapropisms. I mean I’m not even sure if you could program a computer to yield some of the whacko shit that used to come flyin’ outta The Shrub’s stammerin’ beak. He had a real gift for sounding stupid. Well at least when The Shrub wasn’t too busy huffin and puffin ridin’ round the ranch on his Schwinn bike surveyin’ the lay of the land and the brush that needed haulin’.

No doubt Shrub was the master at sounding whacko, but he did mostly manage to be consistent when spewing talking points on the matters his handlers thought important.
Jeb changing his tune every few days is (now for) something completely different.

And as he’s altering his policy pronouncements based on the crowd of the moment, it is in the realm of campaign killing territory.

As bizarre as Shrub’s gaffes were, the “serious people” didn’t require him to clarify them… everybody knew it was synapses misfiring due to a lack of use, not waffling or pandering. Trying to be on both sides of a fence doesn’t jibe with voters or donors.

Well I’d suggest waffling works for Hillary Clinton and pandering works for the entire GOP political apparatus. But waffling and pandering at the same time doesn’t work for the GOP. If you’re going to pander you’ve got to go the full Monty like Trump, Huckabee and Cruz and let your inner bigot voodoo economics freak flag fly high. And if you’re a Third Way DLC Clintonista then your pandering is always slathered in an impenetrable patina of waffling. That way nobody knows what in the fuck you stand for and the duped Dem voters will just project on you whatever their hopes and dreams are about what it means and what you might do. None of which ever ever happens. The Clintonistas just keep the waffle iron hot 24/7/365 until they need to Sister Souljah the base or throw it under the bus.

That ignoramus is taking his talking points from Babs. Re: Katrina “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway,” she said, “so this is working very well for them.”

Wouldn’t surprise me if she said that. All attention has been on the Bush men, but they are all just genial idiots who are only comfortable painting and playing golf. Barbara is the little monster in the background pushing them and being happy rubbing shoulders with Cheney.

He also responds in the video, to a question as to whether we’d be dealing with IS if we hadn’t invaded Iraq to begin with, he responds, “Who knows? It’s such a complicated hypothetical; who knows? I can’t answer that.”